Gayatri Gadhvi, a junior at Oak Park and River Forest High School, will soon head to New York City to compete in the National Shakespeare Competition.

Gadhvi will perform at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on April 27 against about 40 other performers from around the country. 

Her first-place win at regionals this year was especially impressive due to the fact that, instead of competing against the Chicagoland area, she was grouped with the entire eastern United States. 

“Any place that was too rural to have a full-on regional competition, students could submit video submissions…in that sense, it’s even more impressive this way,” said English teacher James Bell, faculty sponsor of the Shakespeare Slam team. “Regional competitions were normally like 15 to 20 people. This covered half the United States.”

Winning isn’t new to Gadhvi, as she won the school Shakespeare competition and advanced to the regional competition her freshman year. Gadhvi’s Shakespeare skills have only grown since then, according to Bell.

“Freshman year, she understandably needed more support with the language…She was a good reader, but I think that she’s specifically become a very good reader of Shakespeare,” said Bell. 

The challenging language is no impediment to her performance, Bell added, saying, “It doesn’t matter that this is Shakespeare. It’s a performance for her. It’s a character.” 

Through practice, Gadhvi has learned to make Shakespeare’s language her own. “A regular monologue just written in our normal modern English should feel the same,” she said. “It shouldn’t feel performative.” 

While regional preparation for Gadhvi looked like memorizing her monologue alone and setting up a tripod to record herself in her basement, preparation for nationals consists of more collaborative work and fine-tuning. 

“For nationals, that’ll look a little different. I’ll probably perform for my friends. I might work with Mr. Bell a little bit on some of my choices. I’ll probably look more in depth in the text of it and figure out any hidden meanings or words I want to say differently,” she said.

Gadhvi won the annual OPRF Shakespeare monologue competition first before competing regionally through the English Speaking Union. Her entry included a Shakespeare monologue and a sonnet consecutively. Gadhvi personally selected Shakespeare’s Sonnet 91 and Portia’s monologue from scene 2.1 of “Julius Cesar.” 

“The message of the sonnet is this person who’s talking to someone they’re in love with and saying that there’s all these things that other people value, like wealth, prestige, and high status. I should care about this, but it’s all incomparable to my love for you. And I really liked that,” said Gadhvi.

“I really love Julius Caesar…and Portia’s a really interesting character in Julius Caesar, because she’s this strong woman, but she still kind of believes in the societal structures that put women down, at least like during Shakespeare’s time,” she added, “I think the dynamic between that was really interesting to play with.” 

Not only does Gadhvi receive unwavering support from Bell, but her teammates feel strongly that the consistency in her work ethic, in addition to her unique performance characteristics, sets her apart from her competition. 

“She does a lot of work to really understand the text and understand what she’s saying…you can’t just say the words and be like, I’m sad at this moment, you have to know what that stems from. And I think she’s very good at portraying that,” said senior Rowan Neville, friend of Gadhvi’s and teammate on the Shakespeare Slam team. 

Gadhvi is not only an exemplary solo performer, but is also an influential leader in the more cooperative environment of the Shakespeare Slam team.

“She’s very encouraging…she’s very good about being very present and pushing them to feel more comfortable to just be with us and not be like, I don’t know anybody here. She’s very, very good at that,” said Neville. 

Gayatri has also acted in OPRF plays, for example, this year’s production of “1984,” directed by Bell, last year’s production of “Eleemosynary,” directed by then-senior Sonja Emerson in Studio 200, and “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged” her freshman year, also directed by Bell.

To those considering competing in OPRF’s Shakespeare monologue competition or joining the Shakespeare Slam team, Gadhvi said, “I think my advice would be just keep trying. There’s so many ways that you can perform different things, but the best way is just to put your own spin on it. That helps you stand out, if you’re yourself, which sounds cliche to say, but it honestly does work.”